The present invention relates to a technology for enhancing the user-friendliness of wireless services.
Smartphones and mobile personal computers (PCs) which are a type of wireless communication terminal can be carried around to anywhere and, because of this convenience, are used indoor and outdoor alike. There are already thousands or ten thousands of pieces of application software for this type of wireless communication terminal, owing to publicly available System Development Kits (SDKs) which facilitate developing wireless communication terminal application software.
With this abundance of wireless communication terminal application software, it will save users the trouble of selecting application software if one piece of application software suitable for a specific location to which a user carries a wireless communication terminal is automatically chosen from among many pieces of application software loaded on the wireless communication terminal.
This can be realized by, for example, technologies described in Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2003-163629 (hereinafter, referred to as Patent Document 1) and Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. H06-187163 (hereinafter, referred to as Patent Document 2).
In the technology of Patent Document 1, a table showing the relation between the ID of a wireless base station and a piece of application software is set in advance in a wireless communication terminal. The wireless communication terminal refers to the table upon receiving the ID of a wireless base station from the wireless base station, and application software that is associated with the received ID is automatically started up.
In the technology of Patent Document 2, a transmitter that outputs a location ID by radio is set up in each location, and a table showing the relation between a location ID and a piece of application software is set in advance in a wireless communication terminal. The wireless communication terminal refers to the table upon receiving a location ID from one of the transmitters, and application software that is associated with the received ID is automatically started up. Patent Document 2 also discloses a method in which a table showing the relation between a location ID and a plurality of prioritized pieces of software is set in advance in a wireless communication terminal, the wireless communication terminal refers to the table upon receiving a location ID from one of the transmitters, and a plurality of pieces of application software that are associated with the received ID are automatically started up in the order of priority.